Donkey Days

Why yes, I do need more Papo donkeys!

I'd bought the current grey Provence donkey pair earlier this year, so when this very sweet older pair come up on Ebay I just couldn't resist adding them to my herd as well.

A really lovely sculpt, with a different shape to the current pair - this one has a larger head and shorter legs. She looks a lot like the donkeys I used to work with, though they were Irish rather than French (they came over on a horse transport by ferry, my boss had ordered just one but he'd bonded so much with his travelling companion she bought both!)

I think I prefer this sculpt to their newer one, it may be a very static and uninspiring pose but she just looks so typically donkey, I love it. The paintwork is quite basic, but effective enough, and curiously they look more grey than brown in the shade, and more brown than grey when the sun's out bright!

I just love that calm, chilled-out look on her face - not a hint of the stubborn and/or depressed donkey stereotypes in this one!

Here's the matching foal, in a slightly more energetic pose!

Pestering mum to play! I always think it's nice when the matching adult and offspring are given complimentary poses, so they each look fine alone but work well as a pair, and can be posed to look as if they're interacting. I've called them Paddington and Bear, they seemed to need matching names.

Having expanded my donkey collection by a substantial amount already this year, I also decided it was about time I had Papo's Poitou donkey in my herd!

He's got lovely fur texture, a little bit smoother than the Schleich version, but sculpted nice and deep to properly show the long hair and the way it curls.

A lovely calm face - I've liked all the Papo donks I've bought this year, they seem to nail the expressions as well as the anatomy and conformation. The catalogue photo for this one wasn't very flattering, in person he's more matte-finish and doesn't look nearly as plasticky!

My Schleich mother-and-baby Poitou pair are Amélie and Émelie, so he really needed a French human name to match them, a fellow collector suggested Grégoire so that's what I've called him.

Breyer Buckeye, the dressage mule

Most of the new additions to my collection lately have been filed under the Tales from the Body Box category, as they're newly finished customs rather than arrivals, but a little while ago my mum (having discovered online shopping, and particularly the joys of second hand stuff on Ebay!) offered to buy a model for my birthday.

It couldn't be a surprise, as she has no idea which ones I've got already or which were on my wishlist, but we browsed together so the choice could be one we both liked, and we settled on this lovely wildly-patterned spotted mule by Breyer.

His official name is Buckeye, and he was released a couple of years ago as a portrait of a real mule, who competes in dressage and with that flashy colour, gets attention wherever he goes. Seriously, a Google image search on 'buckeye dressage mule' supplies some amazing photos - he's got great paces, and he can't half jump!

The other side, which was harder to photograph cos I only had a very narrow sliver of sunlight to catch between the trees (and it's been raining every day since my birthday on thursday, so this was my first chance to get him out there in the sun at all!)

This sculpt is from the 1990s, a little rough round the edges compared to more recent Breyer models, but somehow on a mule it looks part of his charm, rather than a disappointing lack of polish as it would on a horse model. I have the previous spotted mule they made, too, but he's a very different colour and paintwork style, so they'll look great together on the shelf, rather than too similar to need both.

Look at those lonnnng ears! I've only ever met mules in passing, it's donkeys I've worked with, so I'm not really up on breeds or types, and have no idea about the genetics of their colouring when they're getting colours from two different species, so I need to read up a bit about that!

His masked markings are really nicely done, sometimes spots or intricate pinto patterns end up coming out flawed or smudged, but that's another advantage of buying second hand - you can be sure you're getting a really nice one with no quality control issues!

I don't have many mules in my collection, so he makes a very welcome addition to the Harecroft herd.

A mixed box of Schleich, Safari and Papo, plus shetland ponies!

Somewhere between Stablemate and Classic scale, you'll find a lot of medium sized brands - CollectA, Schleich, Safari, Papo, Bullyland, Mojo Fun and WIA. I think of these under the totally made up umbrella term 'mid scale plastics' in my herd, and tag them as such on here - original finish and custom finish found on separate tags.

Recently, I've had a few arrivals which can all be grouped together as this type, so they can all share one post.

Probably the most exciting of the batch for me, the Safari Tinker stallion from a few years ago. Their models went to a weirdly stylised, smooth sculpting style a few years back, and at first I was put off and didn't order any more, but later started to regret not getting at least this guy for my herd of cobs. But by the time I went looking for him, all the ebay listings were really high-priced, more than twice or three times I'd ever paid for Safari in the past, and I decided against getting him several times over as I failed to find an affordable listing. Then he popped up on my friend's sales list, and I got him at long last!

I think I might name him Ace of Hearts, cos he's got a little heart-shaped white marking in one of his patches.

Although I still wouldn't say I love the sculpting style (it reminds me of 3d computer modelling, not physical clay moulded by hand), I find he's a very endearing horse, with a lovely attitude - ears back, but not grumpy or ill-tempered, just not on full alert forwards like most models are posed.

He's got an enormous amount of feather on his legs (wouldn't want the job of keeping that clean and detangled if he was real, the cob I used to take to shows had half as much and I was always glad we only competed in jumping and mounted games cos I'd NEVER have got her legs clean enough for actual showing in a traditional cob or coloured class, haha!)

Along with him came the current-mould Schleich donkey foal, but in brown instead of grey - this one was a special edition, found only in the Farm Life advent calendar. It looks like he only has one ear in this shot!

He's very cute, I like the normal grey one a lot so it's nice to have the extra colour version, even if he doesn't have a matching mum. I really should name him something chocolate-themed, as that's the more usual kind of advent calendar contents!

Next up, Papo donks! I don't generally think much to their horse range, there's only been a few moulds I've liked enough to get (pinto cobs for my herd, the sleeping foal), so I haven't really followed what they release, and had totally missed that these donkeys existed til I spotted them on the sales photo.

Quite a decent sculpt, compared to their horses! Whether it's from the same sculptor, who just does a far better job on donkeys, or whether they had someone else do these (cos I've noticed they have some good and truly awesome sculpting in the wildlife ranges!), I don't know, but they're really rather nice.

They've also got a well done paintjob for mass produced models, with thin grey paint which gathers in the dimples of the hair texture and gives them a two tone effect, and properly donkey-detailed pale noses, eye-rings, and ear-fluff! Because these are described as Provence donkeys from France, I've named her in her native language : Cailloux, which means 'pebbles'.

And here's the baby, who I've called Pascal, in a fun running pose, with all the same appreciated detail as the mum.

Note the quagga background being repurposed as old fashioned stableyard scenery already!

The two together - I seem to have a lot of family pairs of donkeys, toy brands really like releasing matching babies!

The Safari buckskin mustang mare, one of the older-style sculpting from when I really liked what Safari were doing. I have a scuffed palomino on this same mould in my repaint pile, but I like this colour much better and am keeping her for my original finish herd.

And the Safari przewalski's horse. I've been tempted by this one ever since they released him, but couldn't find a new one affordably. They're one of those brands which seem to be mainstream and readily available in mainland European countries, but aside from Toobs they're not really stocked here - I have the choice of hoping the ones I want ever reach ebay, catching second hand ones from other collectors, or buying in from overseas (or probably Amazon, but I boycott them so I don't know!)

He's very cute, but without losing the typical build and look of the takhi, the sculpt isn't overly stylised. He's kind of the halfway point between the old Safari style I loved (Icelandic, Shire, that kind of era), and the newer ones which I'm less keen on. But I am thinking the Fjord would go well enough with him and the rest of my herd that I might have to get that at some point!

 

I named him Zerleg Salkhi, 'wild wind' in Mongolian. Plus one extra picture, because doesn't he look adorable from the front!

And finally, some resculpted shetland ponies. These are a little bit bigger, but can still share the post, as they came from the same home and still fit in with the toy-type theme - they started out as a toy brand called Gee Gee Friends. They're hard hollow plastic and come in packs with accessories, aimed at small children, and often spoilt with painted-on hearts and flowers and bows. Here's one in box. But my hobby friend likes to rescue them from pink pastel purgatory and change them into proper little ponies, in real colours. They've both had their bodies extensively resculpted, heads repositioned, and new manes and tails.

I just had to have two instead of picking only my favourite, so it wouldn't be a lonely only pony in my collection!

This one's sooty palomino, the same colour as my own real shetland, I can't call it after mine, though, cos I already have four portrait models of her (CollectA, Magpie, Julip, Stablemate) and am running out of variations on her name!

And here's her friend again, he almost got a soaking cos it started to rain heavily while I was doing his photos, I think I got him inside my jacket before any spots landed on him!

Tales from the Body Box - the London Zoo Quagga

A while ago, this colour-tinted magic lantern slide came up on ebay, in one of my 'vintage horse' searches. Although I don't collect these, and had no intention of buying it, I immediately recognised the subject - a quagga mare who lived in London Zoo, the only one of her kind ever to be photographed alive. She's the iconic example, used in all books and online information about this extinct subspecies of plains zebra. You can read plenty more about them on the unusually comprehensive Wikipedia article.

And an idea was sparked in my mind which just wouldn't go away. I should paint a custom of the quagga. Not just any quagga, but that one. With photographs of both sides and her face, I could copy her stripe pattern exactly, and make a model which was not only an example of the species, but a portrait of the famous London mare. 

As well as the black and white photos, I needed some frame of reference for the colouring, and collected up pictures of taxidermy specimens in museums. They seem a varied sort of creature, with different specimens showing different shades of beige and brown, and different patterns and extent of striping, but I picked a middling example with good photographs available from different angles - the Berlin quagga, for those who know these well! I even saved a few 19th century paintings and illustrations of the species into my reference folder, as a bit of added inspiration.

I chose the CollectA plains zebra as the body for my quagga project, it's my favourite of the mid-scale plastic moulds, with the most recent Mojo Fun release a close second, but the deciding factor was that I wanted my quagga's display side facing left, like the most well-known photo of the real one!

Here's a series of pictures showing the colour going on, layer by layer...

And then a necessary pause for breath before tackling the most difficult part!

Starting on the striping was the only nerve-wracking thing about the entire paintjob.

Something I'd never done before, I haven't even painted a normal zebra, but I really wanted to create this quagga and convinced myself I'd be able to do a decent job - it can't be any harder than intricate horse patterns like appaloosas or the more fiddly kinds of pinto, it's just familiarity and experience which makes those seem less daunting.  

Sure, quaggas are animals I've been aware of for a really long time. I've seen the photos and the paintings, read the history, looked at the modern project to create quagga-looking zebras. They're not horrifyingly unfamiliar in the same way someone saying 'Hey, paint this species you've never heard of, here's a google image!' would be.

But stripe painting is new territory, and no amount of poring over photographs of museum specimens can really teach your hand how to make that happen. Sometimes you just have to try, and hope for the best!

I started by choosing a single stripe to copy onto the model at a point mid-way down her neck, to try to avoid the stripes clustering either too high up the neck and running out by the time I reached the shoulder, or vice versa. From the first stripe, I could count out how many more she had in each direction, and painted in the mane streaks first, to make sure I spaced them out the right amount. I should have started on the non-display side, to make it less scary as any mistakes would be less noticeable, but I think I just wanted to get it over with, and the relief when it turned out looking perfectly ok was immense!

I'm so pleased with her, even though I'm used to painting horses, and know the satisfaction when a portrait model turns out looking just like whoever it's meant to be, this one feels special cos she's so different to push my painting into new territory, and a significant species for my herd - she fills a quagga shaped gap I didn't realise I needed to tick off the list!

Adding the stripes wasn't as hard as I'd anticipated, tense but not technically complex! The paint I thinned a little by licking the fine brush to a point then touching a small amount of paint dabbed into the lid of the pot - this just helps it go on in a translucent way, and avoids overly thick or accidentally clumsy strokes, leaving a result which looks less 'painty' and more natural on the finished animal. Pleeeeease don't do this unless you're SURE your paint is non toxic! 

Two or three layers of paint were enough to get the stripes as pale as I wanted them, applied in tiny brushstrokes which follow the direction of the hair growth, not the direction of the stripe. I used a little pure white just to brighten them in the most distinct places, and darkened the roots of the mane hair where dirt collects.

It's hard to interpret the fading out of the stripes onto the body of the quagga through a black and white picture. At some points our London mare seems to have darker stripes as well as paler ones, especially behind the shoulder blades, so I've added just a hint of darker paint to back up the paler stripes and blend them into the body colour as they fade out.

As with all custom painted models, there's an element of artistic interpretation, and with an extinct animal with a lot of known variation in colour and pattern, there's going to be even more variety in how we make our models. This isn't the definitive quagga, just my idea of how one individual would've looked in colour and in life.

Many modern illustrations of the quagga show them with a strikingly black and white striped head and neck, but I just don't see any evidence of that look - every single museum quagga I could find good pictures of shows cream stripes on a brown coat, so I've made the choice to stick to that colour scheme.

I even managed to find a photo showing one of the museum quagga specimens from above, to copy the join between vertical and dorsal stripes accurately.

I didn't manage to find a photograph of any tail from behind, so for this detail I relied on the artistic integrity of one of the painters who depicted the quagga in the 1880s, taking it on trust that there really was a dorsal stripe which faded out down the length of the tail!

You might've noticed I've photographed her against all-new scenery, rather than any of my backdrops seen before - I decided my usual scenery just wouldn't cut it for this special portrait model of a very specific animal we know from 19th century natural history. She lived in London Zoo, so it was only right to create her little corner of the zoo for her photoshoot!

After five hours of gluing little bits of cardboard to bigger bits of cardboard...

Her brick wall, the door painted green because in contemporary colour-tinted copies of her most famous photo, the door is shown green - either by choice to give the photo a bit more life and they happened to have some green, or because the doors of London Zoo really were painted green at that time! Either way, I had no reason to decide any other colour would look better or be more authentic, so green it is!

And the yard floor, which looks like block paving, or possibly very neat rectangular stone (used a lot in stableyard buildings of that era), but you can't tell the colour, only that it's lighter and more uniform than the bricks of the wall, so I chose grey.

The set put together, but not glued. I like to leave my pieces separate so I can combine them mix-and-match for other models in future - this yard could go with a fence backdrop instead, or I could use the wall with a road in front of it, and so on.

But for now, it's home to the London Zoo Quagga.